Undergraduate Academic Program Review 

Frequently Asked Questions:

Definitions and methods

• What is assessment?
• What are the purposes of assessment?
• What is the assessment cycle?
• What are program objectives?
• What are program outcomes?
• What is the relationship between an objective and an outcome?
• How detailed should outcomes be?
• How should my program’s objectives relate to college, university, or professional association objectives?
• What about skills and knowledge that don't lend themselves to measurement?
  
• What is the CUPR common language document?
• Why do you use such convoluted educational jargon, which is an instant turn-off for most faculty?
• What is CUPR's shared conceptual understanding of assessment?
• What are some ways to do evaluation?
• What is a rubric?
• What is authentic assessment?
• What are formative and summative assessment?
  
• What is a student portfolio?
• What is TracDAT?
  
  

How is this related to what we already do?

• What is the difference between assessing a program and assessing a student?
• Why aren't course grades sufficient as program assessment?
• Why is this (program review) necessary?
• What about skills and knowledge that don't lend themselves to measurement?
• How does UAPR propose to determine the university’s development of “non-academic skills” that a student learns while attending a Research I university like NC State?
• What type of outcomes and assessments should our department use for service courses? (courses taken primarily by students that are not majoring within our department)
• How does this program review project fit with all our other plans and projects?
• How can we respond to those who perceive these simple outcome assessments as serious research?
  
  General Education Requirements
• What do I do about including general education requirements?
• When will we review minors and GER courses?
  
  Existing accreditation reviews
• What do we do about our outside evaluations, external accrediting procedures, etc.?
• Will our ABET accreditation be sufficient for the UAPR?
  
  Where do we find the time for this?
• Where do we get the time to do these reviews, and how can we give the involved faculty credit for their work?
• What tasks should be dropped in a faculty who is working at 100% effort in order to carry out UAPR mandates?
• Does the UAPR committee fully understand the time and effort involved in making a department’s response meaningful?
• For those of us who have never done this or any other outcomes assessment at all, please give us a breakdown of the estimated time that it will take?

What happens as a result of this assessment and program review?

• What happens to my program review once I submit it?
• Who is going to read and evaluate our program review document?
• I have reviewed the Guidelines for Undergraduate Academic Program Review and it is not clear to me what we do once we review the portfolios.
• What is the bare minimum we have to do to meet University requirements?
• What do I get out of all this?
• How will UAPR provide incentives for departments to follow through with and update their curricular outcomes assessment once the initial plan is set?
• Will this work make the process of learning about our students’ capabilities simpler and more efficient?
• How will CUPR manage more than 30 reviews per year, when all is in full-scale operation?
• Will it (UAPR) last beyond the SACS visit or will it simply fade away?
• Could groups of students who fail mount a class action suit?
• I am still not clear how student portfolios will be randomly selected/collected/evaluated?
  
  How will the University use the information we are providing?
• How will the University use the information we are providing?
• Who will determine and by what mechanism whether our review is sufficient?
• By what mechanism, and to what degree, are these efforts going to be incorporated into the university’s assessment of us?
• Will the results of UAPR be evaluated at dean’s level and above and will the practice of Admissions be affected in any forseeable way?
• To what extent will our assessment plans be judged, graded, or otherwise second-guessed by the Provost’s office?
• What restrictions will be placed on TracDAT access?
• To what extent are plans expected to be made public?
  
  Will faculty actually use the results?
• How will the results of assessment translate into action/implementation?
• Will the faculty make changes in their course development and teaching in response to these new outcomes?
• Will the acquisition and implementation of assessment results be practical?
  
  Show me that it’s effective. Give me examples. (Other examples will be posted from time to time.)
• What change in my department’s undergraduate program has been brought about by UAPR?
• What has been UAPR’s most valuable contribution to me or my program?
• How will the results be implemented to improve the curriculum?
  
  Implications for resources
• In a period of declining resources what is the process supposed to accomplish?
• How will we sustain the resources that are needed in order to support this process?

What do I really have to do?

• What is the bare minimum we have to do to meet University requirements?
• Why do more than the bare minimum?
• What's to keep us from just pronouncing that we are meeting our objectives and outcomes?
• How often do we have to do the assessment and program review?
• Will developing outcomes, assessing them, and using feedback to improve our programs be sufficient or do we have to produce a long report every x years with lots of other data?
• When do we need to have something final to you that we plan to use and can the document evolve and change as we do?
  
  Is participation required?
• What happens if we refuse to do this?
• What happens if I don't participate in Undergraduate Academic Program Review (UAPR)?
• Why should we participate?

What help/guidance/resources are available?

• What resources are available to help with this process?
• How can I get help with the assessment process and the information collection?
• It is still hard to formulate in words what we want the students to come away with. Can you help?
• Who can help us create an appropriate assessment plan, based on stated objectives and outcomes?
• Is it still possible to get the services of a facilitator for a day to help us consolidate our thinking into a useful system/document?
• I wonder how UAPR is going to lead to changes that are needed.
• Could you remind us periodically that these resources exist?
• Will there be any university-wide effort to develop student portfolios?
  
  Motivating faculty and staff
• How can I motivate my staff/faculty to be involved in this process in an on-going way?
• What, if anything, can be done to change the mind of the non-believers?
• How do we improve the department’s handling of the process?
• When will the university wake up the professors who have not been taught how to teach and not lecture?
  
  Managing the assessment/program review process
• Who can help us manage this process?
• How can we manage this process?
• What is TracDAT?
• How can we easily submit information for this program review?
  
  Money
• How much is this likely to cost us and who's going to pay for it?
• How much money will it cost the University and do we expect that the benefits outweigh the costs?

Why are you asking us to do this?

• Who is driving this process? SACS? The University's administration?
• Why should we participate?
• Why do administrative projects take on a life of their own, spawning yet more bureaucratic time-wasting, more paperwork, and more politically correct jargon at a time of budget shortfalls and declining standards of knowledge and literacy among our students?
• How could such a rhetorically over-blown, pedagogically shallow program have been foisted on us?

Legal Issues

• Is it legal for faculty to use student work for assessment purposes, without the student's expressed permission?
• For samples of student work that we have to have available for visitors for accreditation purposes, is it legal to let the outside visitors see sample works without student's permission?
• What is the legality of data collection of student work for assessment purposes with respect to Copyright laws?